Cookson: The Canadian Context

Abstract

The stages of boarding-school life described by Peter Cookson while in apparent reference to the United States, have greater applicability. The concept of boarding as an integral part of school life, which forms the basis of Cookson's essay, only emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. Although American historians of boys' education such as James McLachlan make concerted efforts to demonstrate the existence of an indigenous boarding tradition "independent" of a much more influential British tradition, even they acknowledge that the growth of boarding schools in the United States in the critical years, 1880-1914, was due in large part to the tremendous popularity of these schools in Great Britain. ' Not only was American Anglophilia "intense," to use McLachlan's phrase, but schools in both countries were characterized by identical terminology and dependence on Anglican theology.